Martin, Pippa and Sunita are glad to be contacted on the following:

Pippa Heylings: pippaheylings@gmail.com 07837228416

Martin Cahn: henryjohnfry@googlemail.com 07826748407

Sunita Hansraj: cllr.hansraj@scambs.gov.uk 07584671322

Waste fire by the A14.

On October 6th a number of you may have noticed a mass of waste decanted from a bin lorry onto the southern access to the A14 roundabout. This was due to a fire which broke out in the waste, which was believed to have been caused by batteries which had been put into a black waste bin. This was the standard treatment of such an event, and the fire was then extinguished and the waste later removed.

EWR Update

Nothing much to report really – there will be a consultation meeting on 11th October and the possibility of involving an independent facilitator for the communities immediately around Cambridge is being investigated. All we know so far is that Liz Truss, the new PM, supports building important infrastructure projects. She supports the EWR project, but there is no specification given so far. More details expected “later”. Watch this space.

Ukrainian Guests

The most recent data shows that 720 Ukrainian guests have now arrived in South Cambridgeshire involving 71 parishes. South Cambs District Council (SCDC) Officers have now made 278 welfare visits and conducted 790 DBS checks. Due to the rising cost of living, an additional payment of £150 per month is to be offered to hosts and council officers are now contacting hosts directly with more details.

The Homes for Ukraine scheme was initially set up for a six-month period and many Ukrainian refugees who came to the UK during the early part of the scheme are now reaching the end of the six-month hosting period. The majority of guests will be able to continue with their current hosts, but some will not. In such a case, the Council will try to find a new host (from the existing pool of volunteers) that is as close as possible to the guest’s existing host so they can continue with the employment and/or education arrangements that are already set up. It is not always possible to do this, however, since the pool of potential hosts for rematching is limited, so we are looking for more potential volunteers. If you are aware of anyone who may be interested in becoming a host, please encourage them to contact SCDC on HFULiaison@scambs.gov.uk People who are hosts to Ukrainian guests and/or an have interest in SCDC’s ongoing work in this area can sign up to the regular community updates by emailing duty.communities@scambs.gov.uk.

Business Support – Visit South Cambs

The new tourism website for South Cambridgeshire – created by the District Council – has now been running for a year. It is called “Visit South Cambs” and is at (https://visitsouthcambs.co.uk/ ). If you haven’t visited the site yet, please do so. During the year, around 200 local venues have enjoyed free listings and more than 230 local events have been promoted, from village fetes to art exhibitions. The site has now had more than 8,000 unique visitors from around the world, reaching countries including America, Australia, and Japan.

SCDC’s Business Support and Development Team will soon be using social media (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) to ask residents and businesses to share what they love most about South Cambridgeshire using #WeLoveSouthCambs. The idea is to build-up recommendations and insider secrets about the district’s hidden gems. You can nominate who you think serves the best ice cream, who gives the friendliest service, where are the most scenic country walks or most relaxing pub garden. Please feel free to share your tips on social media and re-share our Visit South Cambs posts too on. You can contact Paul Jenkins-Green with your ideas: Paul.Jenkins-Green@scambs.gov.uk

South Cambs trials plant-powered bin lorries

In our latest step towards decarbonisation, South Cambs has conducted a trial with eight bin lorries using biofuels, cutting their net carbon emissions by 90%. During the past two months, Greater Cambridge Shared Waste, a partnership between South Cambridgeshire District and Cambridge City Councils, ran the eight vehicles on hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) instead of diesel.

The Councils are transitioning their fleet of around 50 bin lorries to electric and alternative fuel vehicles to reduce net carbon emissions and currently, a significant proportion of the council’s carbon emissions originate from diesel bin lorries. Two fully electric bin lorries are already being used in the city of Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire and a solar farm is planned at the waste depot to enable the service to be able to charge more vehicles in the future.

Once a sustainable fuel source is secured (we are reconfirming that the source of the HVO is sustainable), the Councils could purchase further vehicles which could be powered by HVO. This would be an interim solution ahead of more electric or hydrogen trucks joining the fleet as and when they become available from manufacturers and in-line with the depot charging facilities becomingoperational.

Green Spaces

A new coordinating group, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Green Spaces partnership service (SPAG), has been established following the completion of the Future Parks Accelerator (FPA) programme in which South Cambridgeshire participated. The aim is to facilitate the provision of necessary open space in a coordinated manner across the area. One discovery from the initial programme was that many areas in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough were deficient in accessible open green spaces, and that South Cambridgeshire is the only district in the area which does not have its own service managing green spaces. This issue was alluded to in considering the design codes for the new housing development in Cherry Hinton where the green spaces in the City section were to be adopted by the City Council, but where the green areas in South Cambridgeshire were left for further negotiation. Martin Cahn represented the district on the initial FPA programme and hopes to continue on the continuation to which the district is contributing.

The role of SPAG is envisaged to include:

• Coordinating strategic funding bids for investment in parks and green spaces

• Capacity to engage in sub-regional planning and policy making.

• Maintaining a single Natural Capital evidence base

• Advocating and supporting social prescribing as a preventative measure to address community physical and mental health needs through use of parks and green spaces

• Helping to build community resilience by establishing a new Open Space Friends Forum, a database of volunteer groups & needs, and by providing funding and expertise support.

Bus services

The Mayor has obtained £1.7 million to maintain bus services in the County, but this will only suffice for a few months and there is an ongoing need for £4 million p.a. to maintain rural services, otherwise the services would be likely to be reduced by 50%. A long-term solution is needed – the access charge currently being consulted is one way forward, but other avenues which disperse the cost more widely are also being examined.

On street electric car chargers.

A new funding scheme, ORCS (On-street Residential Chargepoint Scheme), is currently open. We have engaged with several Parishes who were initially interested in a joint ORCS bid for car park chargers that could be coordinated by SCDC – so far, one parish has submitted a bid to ORCS (with our support), and this is under assessment by OZEV (Office for zero emission vehicles) at the moment. As they were the landowner and the site was off-street, they did not require County Council permissions.

Separately, we will be taking a proposed grant scheme for Parish EV chargers to Grants Advisory Committee at the end of October, which would provide support/match funding for any other parishes seeking to apply to ORCS. The deadline for completion of installations under the current form of ORCS is 1st April 2024, although the UK Government’s Strategy & Action Plan states that ORCS is ‘ongoing ’ with no end date specified.

We will continue to identify opportunities to install chargers on District Council land, generally small scale, and for our tenants. We will also be working with partners, particularly the County Council, to help produce and implement a coordinated public EV charging strategy for the county.

Pay offer

In view of the wave of industrial unrest at present, we are glad to report that the Council’s pay offer to itsstaff has been accepted.

New social housing site approved in Cottenham

At the last Planning Committee an application for a development of 100% social housing for 34 dwellings was approved on a site at the southern end of Cottenham as an exception site outside the development framework. This is relatively close to Histon and local residents in the ward looking for social housing may wish to be aware of the opportunity if this development does proceed.

Luton Airport Flight Path and Airspace Deployment (AD6) change

This continues to be a problem for many people. Those affected should send in a report to Luton Airport Authority (LAA) via the reporting process every time it happens up to 31st May 2023, which is now the Post Implementation Review (PIR) period when data on how the new arrangement is operating should be collected and reported.

Remember that that complaints can be made through the Travis system at https://bit.ly/Ad6Complaint or by sending an email to noise@ltn.aero or noise.enquiries@ltn.aero, stating the complainant’s name and address, the date and time of the flight and effect it had on them.

Where possible a video or audio recording of the flight event that caused the disturbance should be provided.